BT bringing OnLive cloud gaming to the UK

Cloud gaming service OnLive has announced on its blog that its inked an exclusive deal with BT that could see the ability to stream videogames over the web brought to its broadband customers. BT has also taken a 2.6 percent stake in the company.

OnLive promises something rather revolutionary -- the ability to stream games directly to your computer from a server farm, in glorious 720p resolution at 60 frames per second, without the need for decent gaming hardware. Your control inputs are sent to the server, and it sends the responses back as if rendered on a console. That also means you don't need much in the way of graphics oomph in your machine -- just the ability to play back 720p video.

People with netbooks, nettops, and older laptops should -- if OnLive delivers on its promises -- be able to get access to the same gaming experiences currently limited to people who pay upwards of £1,000 for a dedicated gaming PC. It'd even be possible to sell "thin client" consoles that plug into an HDTV and your web connection, delivering games without the need for a PC at all.

The service is due to launch in the States in late summer 2010 following a beta test. BT says that it'll be announcing its own launch plans later in the year. While you might think a late UK launch is lame, there's inevitably going to be teething problems that need sorting out, so Brits may enjoy a more refined experience than America's early adoptors.

However, there's a lot of scepticism about OnLive's abilities to deliver its service at all. If you're curious, Eurogamer has a full-on takedown of why they think it "can't possibly work", but it revolves around three main problems: the fact that OnLive will need server processing power equivalent to a high-spec PC for every user; the issue of latency -- particularly over slower broadband connections; and the fact that video encoding currently isn't at a level that can cope with good quality 720p at 60fps in real-time.

So while OnLive promises much, we're yet to see whether it can deliver on those promises in a real-world situation with UK broadband connections. When the beta test opens, we'll let you know whether it's safe to junk your Xbox 360.

Edited by Nate Lanxon

Comments

the photo is of a USA data centre - the exit signs give it away, not to EU regs